Problem connecting to straightdope.com

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1

I suppose this is less of an issue with the message board and more one on my end, but this seems like the best place to put it.

I recently made some changes to my router (nothing big; just enabling access for a new computer), resulting in being unable to resolve any DNS. A powercycle fixed that for the most part, but now if I try to access www.straightdope.com or Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks., I get a time-out. I’m unable to ping or tracert the domain; for whatever reason, I’m completely unable to resolve the IP.

Obviously the site isn’t down whenever I’m at home but not at the office, but I’m completely puzzled as to this selective blocking. Any thoughts?

2

I don’t get it. You’re posting on here about NOT being able to see the site? How did you get here right now?

3

SDMB still has server issues. Meaning there are indeed times when you will not be able to connect or that the response time from SDMB will be veeery slooowww. It’s a bit better than it was - the problems seem to resolve in less than hours - but it still happens.

4

I’m posting from work.

I strongly doubt the website’s been inaccessible for 12 straight hours two nights in a row with nobody complaining about it. I can’t even connect to www.straightdope.com, which is usually pretty responsive even when the board is slow. I’m fairly sure it’s on my end, so again this may have been the wrong forum to ask about it in, but I figured this would be the best place for technical questions.

I can ping boards.straightdope.com from here, so I suppose I’ll try using the IP it resolved to when I get home. It just seems very unusual to be unable to resolve a single site like this, so I was wondering if anyone knew what the issue might be or what to check.

5

OK, I’ve not got much but once I had similar problems with Yahoo. Something about my cookies were corrupted or some such thing. I had to delete all cookies and then things worked again (but it was a pain). Have you also wiped out your cache?

6

I actually hadn’t even considered cookies. Nothing’s changed with my browser, but it’s certainly a possibility. I’ll give it a try when I get home.

7

Also check the firewall on your router to be sure you’re not accidentally blocking access yourself. Ditto your ISP; sometimes we make the NetNanny and similar lists and that’s the default setting for people and they don’t even realize it, you have to go in and raise your levels or allow the Straight Dope in individually.

Hope you get this straightened out, it really is on your end, we have had no outages that we are aware of.

8

Try to force resolve the IP using your hosts file. Can you access the site by IP directly?

9

I’m very, very puzzled. I tried accessing the site again and got the same error. I tried using the IP addresses and still nothing. I tried pinging the IP, then boards.straightdope.com…then suddenly I could access the boards again. It may have been clearing the cookies that did it, but I honestly don’t understand why that would have worked. :confused: Oh well.

Though the matter is apparently moot now, the IP address I got for boards.straightdope.com wouldn’t work, but the IP for the front page did.

Thanks for the suggestions. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on things technical, along comes something completely weird.

10

Sounds like perhaps it was the cookies. Giving your system a chance to reset with new cookies may well have solved the problem, it often does. :slight_smile:

Glad you’re back where you should be.